LTLFTcomposite
Well-known member
At 10 cents a kWh, that would be 75 cents out of the roughly $2.06 a gallon of gasoline is going for today. Not seein it.
7.5 kWh of electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline?
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LTLFTcomposite
Well-known member
evnow said:
Of course a lot of other interesting things are contained in the other 27 barrels, one of them being the asphalt for the roads you'll be driving your EVs on.
LTLFTcomposite said:
For very large industrial electricity consumption the rates are more like 4 to 5 cents a kWh. Todays spot prices for Palo Verde, firm on-peak was 4.12 cents a kWh. These refineries are typically the electrical companies largest customers, so they get the best pricing.
Refining costs are presently about 40 cents per gallon of gasoline. I suspect the bulk of that goes to electricity and NG.
AndyH
Well-known member
evnow
Well-known member
indyflick said:
Not just that - a lot of refineries produce electricity on premise - and even sell back to the utilities.
Anyway, this is going to be my favorite retort whenever I hear FUD about shifting emissions from tail pipe to smoke stack.
Rik
Member
I'm a chemical engineer who works in oil refining. The refinery I work for uses less than 1 kWh of electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline, and I don't think it's unusual in that respect.
AndyH
Well-known member
Rik said:
What other sources of energy are also used?
Rik
Member
Natural gas is used to fire heaters and to produce the electricity and steam that oil refineries use.AndyH said:
A byproduct of oil refining is a light hydrocarbon fuel gas that is also burned in refineries, offsetting some of the need for natural gas.
AndyH
Well-known member
Rik said:
Makes sense - thanks. I expect that different refineries have a different energy mix as well. Some of the large complexes in the Houston area apparently have their own on-site power plants (like the gas units you mentioned). There are a couple of smaller refineries in San Antonio that work with intermediate liquid products and make final products (jet fuel, diesel, etc.) and they don't have the 'free' natural gas to use.
evnow
Well-known member
Rik said:
Yes - thats why we should really be talking about energy used rather than electricity used.
Rik, do you know what the kwh equivalent energy that is used for refining ?
Rik
Member
Hmmm... we don't normally think if it that way so I'm not sure.evnow said:
BTW I forgot to mention that natural gas is also used in most oil refineries to make the hydrogen that is consumed in refineries, for the hydrotreating and hydrocracking processes.
evnow
Well-known member
Rik said:
Would you know how much NG is used on the avg ?
Rik
Member
When my work computer comes back from the IT ICU I'll try to estimate that.evnow said:
evnow
Well-known member
Here is a useful document I found.
http://www.cbecal.org/pdf/CBE09RefineryGHGemissionsfmdirtycrude.pdf
ps : This 522-770 kbtu is equivalent to 153 to 226 kwh. Divind this by 38 gallons of gasoline equivalent energy you can get out of a barrel of oil (http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1715), we get between 4 and 6 kwh for a gallon of gas.
That is enough to propel an avg EV 20 miles - the same a gallon of gas propels an avg ICE car.
http://www.cbecal.org/pdf/CBE09RefineryGHGemissionsfmdirtycrude.pdf
See appendix table 7 for all fuel inputs.
ps : This 522-770 kbtu is equivalent to 153 to 226 kwh. Divind this by 38 gallons of gasoline equivalent energy you can get out of a barrel of oil (http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1715), we get between 4 and 6 kwh for a gallon of gas.
That is enough to propel an avg EV 20 miles - the same a gallon of gas propels an avg ICE car.
AndyH
Well-known member
Rik
Member
This is a complicated issue to assess. Some of these "fuels consumed" are byproducts from oil refining. It's not clear whether or not they are counting hydrogen twice, both as something that is consumed by refining and also as something produced from natural gas. Also, most hydrogen in oil refineries is used as a reactant in hydroprocessing and not as a "fuel consumed". Residual fuel oil and petroleum coke are produced by oil refineries far in excess of what they consume.evnow said:
Rik
Member
I don't think most of the kWh consumed by oil refining per gal gasoline numbers being claimed here and on similar forums are even close to being correct. For starters, the claims are a factor of 5 - 15 higher than the oil refinery I support, which because it processes heavy crude, is very complex, runs to high conversions, and produces fuels to California's demanding specifications is probably on the high side of the average in terms of energy consumed.
Oil products have a large EROEI -- a lot more energy is produced when these fuels are burned than goes into making the fuels. This would not be the case if oil products were the large energy consumers that some are claiming.
Oil products have a large EROEI -- a lot more energy is produced when these fuels are burned than goes into making the fuels. This would not be the case if oil products were the large energy consumers that some are claiming.
evnow
Well-known member
Rik said:
It is a complicated issue - but should have been taken care of by this study. I'll try to get in touch with this author - but a basic thing like not double counting etc should be fairly simple to handle. In any energy system, since it is possible to use part of the inputs/outputs to fuel the system itslef, there is nothing novel here.
johnr
Well-known member
... also, we might as well consider the emissions caused by the natural gas that's flared in the oil extraction process ...
Wow, so many steps involved in getting that dino-juice out of the ground and into the gas tank :shock: with energy used every step of the way.
By comparison, getting power into my EV will be way more efficient - the sun shines down on my solar panels, generating an electric current that travels into an inverter and a charger - a 2-step power conditioning process - before being gobbled up by the batteries in my new Leaf
Wow, so many steps involved in getting that dino-juice out of the ground and into the gas tank :shock: with energy used every step of the way.
By comparison, getting power into my EV will be way more efficient - the sun shines down on my solar panels, generating an electric current that travels into an inverter and a charger - a 2-step power conditioning process - before being gobbled up by the batteries in my new Leaf
So Rik, if refining gasoline is so efficient, what accounts for the fact that petroleum refineries in the US in 2005 used 48,891,000,000 kWh of electricity?
I'm now of the opinion that, as electric cars come online, petroleum refineries should be restricted from using any grid electricity. That electricity is better used by BEV's
I'm now of the opinion that, as electric cars come online, petroleum refineries should be restricted from using any grid electricity. That electricity is better used by BEV's
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